Part 6 (1/1)

Certainly M Dalou is far more nearly in the current of contemporary art than his friend Rodin, who stands with his ular evolution of French sculpture, whereas one can easily trace the derivation of M Dalou and his relations to the present and the immediate past of his art in his country His work certainly has its Fragonard, its Clodion, its Carpeaux side Like every tely attracted by the decorative as well as the significant and the expressive, pure style in and for itself has its fascinations, its te the complete possession of hiested, an important difference, disclosed in the fact that M Dalou uses his faculty for style in a personal rather than in the conventional way His decoration is distinctly Dalou, and not arrangements after classic formulae It is full of zest, of ardor, of audacity So that if his work has what one may call its national side, it is because the author's tehly national at bottom, and not because this temperament is feeble or has been academically repressed But the ory of French sculpture shows the moral difference between it and the work of M Rodin Morally speaking, it is ether, but mainly--rhetorical, whereas M Rodin's is distinctly poetic It is delightful rhetoric and it hasdistinction I have mentioned But with the passions in their simplest and last analysis he hardly occupies hinificent bas-relief of the Hotel de Ville in Paris, is a triu, prodigious in its wealth of ied with artificial felicity, full of suggestiveness, full of power, abounding in definite sculptural qualities, both ain is Rubens-like in its exuberance, but of fir the _kind_ of impressiveness of the Dante portal it certainly does not essay It is in quite a different sphere Its exaltation is, if not deliberate, admirably self-possessed To find it theatrical would be silo-Saxon preference for reserve and repression in circu expansion and elation--a preference surely born of timorousness and essentially very subtly theatrical itself It is simply not deeply, intensely poetic, but, rather, a splendid piece of rhetoric, as I say

So, too, is the famous Mirabeau relief, which is perhaps M Dalou's masterpiece, and which represents his national side as coroup for the Place des Nations does those of his qualities I have endeavored to indicate by calling them Venetian Observe the rare fidelity which has contributed its weight of sincerity to this admirable relief Every prominent head of the many members of the assembly, who nevertheless rally behind Mirabeau with a fine pell-mell freedom of artistic effect, is a portrait The effect is like that of sie leisure of an age very different fro hurry of our own In every respect this work is as French as it is individual It is penetrated with a sense of the dignity of French history It is as far as possible reenre_ effect such a scheesture, in fact his entire presence, is superb, but the marquis is as fine in his way as the tribune in his The beholder assists at the clireat crisis, unfolded to him in the impartial spirit of true art, quite without partisanshi+p, and though manifestly stimulated by sympathy with the nobler cause, even le and the distinction of those on all sides engaged in it, and acquiring from these a kind of elation, of exaltation such as the Frenchive expression to his artistic and his patriotic instincts at the same moment

The distinctly national qualities of this masterpiece, and their harmonious association with the individual characteristics of M Dalou, his love of nature, his native distinction, his charm, and his power, in themselves bear eminent witness to the vitality of modern French sculpture, in spite of all the influences which tend to petrify it with system and convention M Rodin stands so wholly apart that it would be unsafe perhaps to argue confidently from his impressive works the potentiality of periodical renewal in an art over which the Institute presides with still so little challenge of its title But it is different with M Dalou Extraordinary as his talent is, its unquestioned and universal recognition is probably in great measure due to the preparedness of the environh degree which French popular aesthetic education, in a word, has reached And one's last word about conte a consideration of the works of such protestants as Rodin and Dalou--nition of the immense service of the Institute in education of this kind Let some country without an institute, around which what aesthetic feeling the age perive us a Rodin and a Dalou!